Durham Miners' Gala 2006

John from A Revolutionary Act bears witness to actual SPGB activity.

"Members who manned the Party stall at The Miners' Gala today 8.10am - 5.00pm sold £58.00 of Party wares and gave away a few dozen back issues of the Standard free. We had a couple of ex-members attending the stall, one of whom is keen to rejoin, and a few sympathisers who we've known for years and who said they'll come to meetings if we can kick start the meetings up here again. A friend of Cde Alan J's (Dek?) stopped by for a chat and bought a book. We might have sold more but for the added fairground attractions they have there and the competition from the myriad leftist, anarchist and campaign groups in attendance. Even the IWW had a stall there this year.

The Organisers (NUM Durham area) reckon there was 70,000 there, but I guess they get their crowd counters from the SWP - maybe half that. The usual suspects spoke from the stage, again pushing their reformist pro-Labour cant (it's in the NUM Durham area constitution that only speakers who support Labour can speak).

A woman came to the stall and said she was retiring to Spain and wondered what she could do with her late father's collection of old marxist books. I told her we'll (the Party) have them and gave her our details (turns out she only lives about two miles from me).

Amusing highpoint - ten minutes after we erected it, the friggin' Gazebo took off in a gust of wind - due in no small part to the sizeable banner atached to it and sailed through the air and crashed into a prize draw trailer. The old guy at the next stall - selling mining memorabilia - gave us a hammer and some large pegs to steak the gazebo down and remarked "I can't believe I'm actually helping the Socialist Party - my grandfather was Keir Hardie's election agent.""